The visits of the Pope, which he dared
not refuse, he rendered difficult by leaving no access to his scaf-
folding save by a steep step-ladder, upon which the old Pope had
to risk himself.
not refuse, he rendered difficult by leaving no access to his scaf-
folding save by a steep step-ladder, upon which the old Pope had
to risk himself.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v17 - Mai to Mom
I lived
nine years at the gates of Père la Chaise, and there was my only
promenade. Then I lived near La Bièvre, in the midst of great con-
vent gardens; more tombs. I lived a life that the world would have
called buried, with no society but the past, my only friends buried
people. The gift that St. Louis asked, and did not obtain, I had, -
the gift of tears. All those I wept over — peoples and gods — revived
I had no other art. »
All the criticism that has been written about Michelet is little
more than sermons from this text, furnished by himself. In it he
himself furnishes all the commentary needed upon his work; it is a
résumé of all his talent, and of his faults, — which are only the faults
of this talent, as Taine points out. Michelet's exalted sensibility he
calls imagination of the heart. ” To summarize Taine's conclusions:
for me.
« His impressionable imagination is touched by general as well as by par-
ticular facts, and he sympathizes with the life of centuries as with the life of
## p. 9984 (#396) ###########################################
9984
JULES MICHELET
men.
He sees the passions of an epoch as clearly as the passions of a man,
and paints the Middle Age or the Renaissance with as much vivacity as Phi-
lippe le Bel or François 1. . . . Every picture or print he sees, every
document he reads, touches and impresses his imagination; vividly moved and
eloquent himself, he cannot fail to move others. His book, the History,
seizes the mind fast at the first page; in vain you try to resist it, you read to
the end. You think of the dialogue where Plato describes the god drawing
to himself the soul of the poet, and the soul of the poet drawing to himself
the souls of his auditors.
Is it possible, where facts and men impress
themselves so vividly upon an inflamed imagination, to keep the tone of nar.
ration ? No, the author ends by believing them real; – he sees them alive, he
speaks to them. Michelet's emotions thus become his convictions; history
unrolls before him like a vision, and his language rises to Apocalyptic. ”
.
>
(
In his first design or vision of the History of France, Michelet
saw men and facts not chained to one another, and to past and
future, by chains of logical sequence, he saw them as episodes
rising in each period to a culminating and dramatic point of inter-
est; and however interrupted his work was, he pursued his original
design. Hence his volumes bear the titles of episodes: The Renais-
sance,' (The Reformation,' 'Religious Wars,' 'The League and Henry
IV. ,' (Henry IV. and Richelieu,' Richelieu and the Fronde,' Louis
XIV. ,' (The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes,' (Louis XV. ,' 'Louis
XV. and Louis XVI. ,' (The French Revolution. The Renaissance he
incarnated in Michel Angelo, the Revolution in Danton. He in fact
breathed a human soul into every epoch, period, and event that came
under his pen: and “a soul,” he says, weighs infinitely more than a
kingdom or an empire; at times, more than the human race. ” He
wrote as Delacroix painted,” Taine says: «risking the crudest color-
ing; seeking means of expression in the gutter mud itself; borrowing
from the language of medicine, and the slang of the vulgar, details
and terms which shock and frighten one. ” His prolific suggestions
swarm and multiply over the diseased tissue of a character, in the
tainted spot of a heart, until, as in the description of the moral
decadence of Louis XV. , the imaginative reader shudders and stops
reading; for suggestion has suggested what it is unbearable to think.
It is to the perfect happiness of his marriage to a second wife -
an incomparable companion — that we owe that series of books whose
dithyrambic strains were poured out under the silvery light of a
continuous honey-moon, as a biographer expresses it: L'Oiseau,'
L'Insecte,' L'Amour,' 'La Mer,' to which later a fifth, La Mon-
tagne,' was added; and which Taine says adds him to the three
great poets of France during the century,- De Musset, Lamartine,
and Hugo: «for art and genius, his prose is worth their poetry. ”
The Bible of Humanity, and some volumes of collected essays com-
plete the series of his published writings.
## p. 9985 (#397) ###########################################
JULES MICHELET
9985
In 1870 the Franco-Prussian war called out his France before
Europe,' a passionate appeal to the common fraternity of all peoples.
He was ardently engaged upon a history of the nineteenth century,
his last return to his History of France,' when he died in 1874 of
heart disease contracted during the Prussian invasion of his country.
He lies buried in Père la Chaise, where in youth he used to wander
among the dead he loved so well; who, responding to the passionate
evocation of his imagination, resumed their being before his mental
vision with such vivified reality, that in their turn they evoked from
his heart the genius that was henceforth to be his life.
Grace Tug
THE
THE DEATH OF JEANNE D'ARC
From the History of France)
He end of the sad journey was the Vieux-Marché, the fish-
market. Three scaffolds had been erected. Upon one were
the episcopal and royal chairs, and the throne of the car-
dinal of England amid the seats of his prelates. On the other
were to figure the personages of the dismal drama: the preacher,
the judges, the bailiff, and lastly the condemned one. Apart
was seen a large scaffold of masonry, loaded and overloaded with
wood. As to the pyre, there was nothing to complain of: it
frightened by its height. This was not merely to make the exe-
cution more solemn: there was an intention in it; it was that
the pile being built so high, the executioner could only reach
the bottom portion to light it, and thus he could not abridge the
martyrdom nor expedite the end, as he sometimes did to others,
sparing them the flame. Here there was no idea of defrauding
justice, or giving a dead body to the fire; they wished her to
be well burned, alive, and so that, placed on the summit of this
mountain of wood, and dominating the circle of lances and swords
around her, she could be seen from all parts of the place. Slowly
burned under the eyes of a curious crowd, there was
to believe that at the end she would be surprised into some
weakness, that something would escape her that might pass as
a disavowal; at the least, confused words to be interpreted, low
prayers, humiliating cries for mercy, as from a distracted woman.
XVII-625
reason
## p. 9986 (#398) ###########################################
9986
JULES MICHELET
The ghastly ceremony began by a sermon. Master Nicolay
Midy, one of the lights of the University of Paris, preached on
this edifying text: “When a member of the Church is ill, the
whole Church is ill. ” This poor Church could only cure itself
by cutting off a member. He concluded by the formula, "Jeanne,
go in peace: the Church cannot defend you. "
Then the judge of the Church, the bishop of Beauvais, be-
nignly exhorted her to think of her soul, and to recall all her
misdeeds in order to excite herself to contrition. The Assertors
had judged that it was according to law to read to her her abju-
ration: the bishop did not do anything of the kind, - he feared
her denials, her reclamations. But the poor girl did not dream
of thus quibbling for her life: she had far other thoughts.
Before they could even exhort her to contrition, she was on her
knees invoking God, the Virgin, St. Michael, and St. Catherine;
forgiving everybody, and asking forgiveness; saying to the assist-
ants, “Pray for me. " She requested each of the priests, particu-
larly, to say a mass for her soul. All this in such a devout
fashion, so humble, so touching, that emotion spreading, no one
could control himself: the bishop of Beauvais began to weep, he
of Boulogne sobbed; and behold the English themselves crying
and weeping also — Winchester with the others.
But the judges, who had for a moment lost countenance, recov-
ered and hardened themselves. The bishop of Beauvais, wiping his
eyes, began to read the condemnation. He reminded the culprit
of her crimes,- schism, idolatry, invocation of demons; how she
had been admitted to penitence; and how, seduced by the Prince
of Lies, she had fallen again - oh sorrow! - like the dog which
returns to his vomit. « Therefore we pronounce you a rotten
member, and as such, cut off from the Church. We deliver you
over to the secular power, praying it nevertheless to moderate
its judgment, by sparing you death and the mutilation of your
members. »
Thus forsaken by the Church, she committed herself in all
confidence to God. She asked for the cross. An Englishman
passed to her a cross, which he made of sticks: she received it
none the less devoutly; she kissed it, and placed it, this rough
cross, beneath her clothes and on her flesh. But she wished
to hold the Church's cross before her eyes till death; and the
good bailiff Massieu and brother Isambart were so moved by
her insistence that they brought her that of the parish church
of Saint-Sauveur. As she was embracing this cross and being
## p. 9987 (#399) ###########################################
JULES MICHELET
9987
couraged by Isambart, the English began to find all this very
long: it must be at least midday; the soldiers grumbled, the
cap-
tains said, “How, priest, will you make us dine here ? ” Then
losing patience, and not awaiting the order of the bailiff, who
nevertheless alone had authority to send her to death, they made
two soldiers climb up to remove her out of the priests' hands.
At the foot of the tribunal she was seized by armed men, who
dragged her to the executioner and said to him, “Do your
work. ” This fury of the soldiers caused horror; several of the
assistants, even the judges, fled in order not to see more. When
she found herself below in the open square amid these English-
men, who laid hands on her, nature suffered and the flesh was
troubled; she cried anew, "O Rouen! you will then be my last
dwelling-place. ” She said no more, and sinned not by her lips
even in this moment of terror and trouble; she accused neither
her king nor his saints. But, the top of the pile reached, seeing
that great city, that immovable and silent crowd, she could not
keep from saying, “O Rouen! Rouen! I have a great fear that
you will have to suffer for my death! ” She who had saved the
people and whom the people abandoned, expressed in dying only
admirable sweetness of soul, only compassion for them.
She was
tied beneath the infamous writing, crowned with a mitre, on
which was to be read, “Heretic, pervert, apostate, idolater ” — and
then the executioner lighted the fire. She saw it from above, and
uttered a cry. Then, as the brother who was exhorting her paid
no attention to the flames, she feared for him; forgetting herself,
she made him go down.
Which well proves that up to then she had retracted noth-
ing expressedly; and that the unfortunate Cauchon was obliged,
no doubt by the high Satanic will which presided, to come to
the foot of the pyre, to front the face of his victim, to try to
draw out some word. He only obtained one despairing one.
She said to him with sweetness what she had already said:
“Bishop, I die by your hand. If you had put me in the Church's
prisons this would not have happened. ” They had doubtless
hoped that believing herself abandoned by her king, she would
at the last accuse him, say something against him. She still
defended him. “Whether I did well or ill, my king had nothing
to do with it; it was not he who counseled me. ”
But the flame rose. At the moment it touched her, the un-
fortunate one shuddered, and asked for holy water; for water-
C
»
## p. 9988 (#400) ###########################################
9988
JULES MICHELET
it was apparently the cry of fright. But recovering herself
instantly, she no longer named any but God, his angels and his
saints. She testified, “Yes, my voices were from God; my voices
did not deceive me! This vanishing of all doubt, in the flames,
should make us believe that she accepted death as the deliv-
erance promised; that she no longer understood salvation in a
Judaistic and material sense, as she had done till then; that
she saw clear at last, and that coming out of the shadows, she
obtained that which she still lacked of light and holiness.
Ten thousand men wept. A secretary of the King of Eng-
land said aloud, on returning from the execution, "We are lost:
we have burned a saint! This word escaped from an enemy is
none the less grave. It will remain. The future will not con-
tradict it. Yes, according to Religion, according to Patriotism,
Jeanne d'Arc was a saint.
What legend more beautiful than this incontestable history!
But we should take care not to make a legend of it: every
feature, even the most human, should be piously preserved; the
touching and terrible reality of it should be respected. Let the
spirit of romance touch it if it dare: poetry never will do it.
And what could it add ? The idea which all during the Middle
Ages it had followed from legend to legend - this idea
found at last to be a person; this dream was tangible. The
helping Virgin of battles, upon whom the soldiers called, whom
they awaited from on high — she was here below.
-
In whom!
This is the marvel. In that which was despised, in that which
was of the humblest, - in a child, in a simple girl of the fields,
of the poor people of France. For there was a people, there
a France. This last figure of their Past was also the first
of the time that was beginning. In her appeared at the same
time the Virgin and already the country.
Such is the poetry of this great fact; such is the philosophy,
the high truth of it. But the historical reality is not the less
certain; it was only too positively and too cruelly established.
This living enigma, this mysterious creature whom all judged
to be supernatural, this angel or demon who according to some
would fly away some morning, was found to be a young woman,
a young girl: she had no wings, but, attached like us to a
mortal body, she was to suffer, die; and what a hideous death!
But it is just in this reality, which seems degrading, in this sad
trial of nature, that the ideal is found again and shines out. The
was
was
## p. 9989 (#401) ###########################################
JULES MICHELET
9989
contemporaries themselves recognized in it Christ among the
Pharisees. Yet we should see in it still another thing: the pas-
sion of the Virgin, the martyrdom of purity.
There have been many martyrs; history cites innumerable
ones, more or less pure, more or less glorious. Pride has had its
own, and hatred, and the spirit of dispute. No century has lacked
fighting martyrs, who no doubt died with good grace when they
could not kill. These fanatics have nothing to see here. The
holy maid is not of them; she had a different sign,-goodness,
charity, sweetness of soul. She had the gentleness of the ancient
martyrs, but with a difference. The early Christians only re-
mained sweet and pure by fleeing from action, by sparing them-
selves the struggle and trial of the world. This one remained
sweet in the bitterest struggle of good amid the bad; peaceful
even in war,— that triumph of the Devil, — she carried into it the
spirit of God. She took arms when she knew “the pity there
was in the kingdom of France. ” She could not see French blood
flow. This tenderness of heart she had for all men; she wept
after victories, and nursed the wounded English. Purity, sweet-
ness, heroic goodness — that these supreme beauties of soul should
be met in a girl of France may astonish strangers, who only like
to judge our nation by the lightness of its manners.
to them (and without self-partiality, since to-day all this is so far
from us) that beneath this lightness of manner, amid her follies
and her vices, old France was none the less the people of love
and of grace.
The savior of France was to be a woman. France was a
woman herself. She had the nobility of one; but also the ami-
able sweetness, the facile and charming pity, the excellence at
least of impulse. Even when she delighted in vain elegances
and exterior refinements, she still remained at the bottom nearer
to nature. The Frenchman, even when vicious, kept more than
any one else his good sense and good heart. May new France
not forget the word of old France: Only great hearts know
how much glory there is in being good. ” To be and remain
such, amid the injustices of men and the severities of Provi-
dence, is not only the gift of a fortunate nature, but it is strength
and heroism. To keep sweetness and benevolence amid so many
bitter disputes, to traverse experience without permitting it to
touch this interior treasure, - this is divine. Those who persist
and go thus to the end are the true elect. And even if they
Let us say
## p. 9990 (#402) ###########################################
9990
JULES MICHELET
have sometimes stumbled in the difficult pathways of the world,
amid their falls, their weakness, and their childishnesses they will
remain none the less children of God.
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Grace King.
MICHEL ANGELO
From The Renaissance)
W* the placid facility of
»
HERE was the soul of Italy in the sixteenth century? In
the placid facility of the charming Raphael? In the
sublime ataraxy of the great Leonardo da Vinci, the
centralizer of arts, the prophet of sciences ? He who wished
for insensibility, he who said to himself, “Fly from storms," he
nevertheless, whether he wished it or not, left in his St. John,'
in the ‘Bacchus,' and even in the Jocunda,' in the nervous
and sickly memory that all those strange heads express on their
lips — he has left a painful trace of the convulsing pains of the
Italian mind; of the kind of Maremma fever, which was cov-
ered by a false hilarity; of the jesting, rather light than gay, of
Pulci and Ariosto. There was a man in these times, a heart, a
true hero. Have you seen in the Last Judgment,' towards
the middle of the immense canvas, him who is disputing with
demons and angels,- have you seen in that face and in others
those swimming eyes struggling to look above; mortal anxiety
of a soul in which two opposing infinities are struggling ? True
image of the sixteenth century, between old and new beliefs;
image of Italy among nations; image of the man of the time,
and of Michel Angelo himself.
It has been marvelously well said, “Michel Angelo was the
conscience of Italy. From birth to death, his work was the
Judgment. ” One must not pay attention to the first pagan
sculptures of Michel Angelo, or to the Christian velleities that
crossed his life. In St. Peter he had no thought of the triumph
of Catholicism; his only dream was the triumph of the new art,
the completion of the great victory of his master Brunelleschi,
before whose work he had his tomb placed, in order, as he said,
to contemplate it throughout eternity. He proceeded from two
men, Savonarola and Brunelleschi. He belongs to the religion
of the Sibyls, of that of the prophet Elias, of the savage locust.
## p. 9991 (#403) ###########################################
JULES MICHELET
9991
eaters of the Old Testament. His one glory and his crown
nothing like it before, nothing afterwards — is his having put
into art that eminently novel thing, the thirst for and aspiration
towards the good. Ah, how well he deserves to be called the
defender of Italy! Not for having fortified the walls of Florence
in his last days; but for having, in the infinite number of days
that followed and will follow, showed in the Italian soul, mar-
tyred like a soul without right, the triumphant idea of a right
that the world did not yet see.
To recall his origin is to tell why he alone could do these
things. Born in the city of judges, Arezzo, to which all others
came to get podestàs, he had a judge for a father. He de-
scended from the counts of Canossa, relatives of the Emperor
who founded at Bologna, against the popes, the school of Roman
law. We must not be astonished that his family at his birth
gave him the name of the angel of justice, Michael, just as the
father of Raphael gave him the name of the angel of grace. It
was a choleric race. Arezzo, an old Etruscan city, petty fallen
republic, was despised by the great banking city; Dante gave
it a knock in passing. One of the most ordinary subjects of
Italian farces was the podestà, representing the powerlessness of
the law in stranger cities that called him, paid him, and drove
him out. Again everybody in Italy made mockery of his justice.
There was needed a heroic effort, like that of Brancaleone's, to
make the sword of justice respected. It needed a lion-hearted
man, stranger and isolated as he was, to execute his own judg-
ments disputed by all. Michel Angelo would have been one of
these warrior judges of the thirteenth century. By heart and
stature he belonged to the great Ghibellines of that time; to the
one whom Dante honored on his couch of fire; to the other with
the tragic face: "Lombard soul, why the slow moving of thine
eyes ? one would say a lion in his repose. ” Not wearing the
sword, under the reign of men of money, in its place he took the
chisel. He was the Brancaleone, the judge and podestà, of Ital-
ian art. He exercised in marble and stone the high censure of
his time. For nearly a century his life was a combat, a contin-
ual contradiction. Noble and poor, he was reared in the house of
the Medici, where we have seen him sculpturing statues of snow.
Republican, all his life he served princes and popes.
Envy dis-
figures him, a rival has deformed him forever. Made to love
and be loved, always he will remain alone.
## p. 9992 (#404) ###########################################
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JULES MICHELET
What was of great assistance to Michel Angelo was the fact
that the Sixtine Chapel, the work of Sixtus IV. , uncle of Julius
IV. , was only a second thought of the latter, who attached the
glory of his pontificate to the construction of St. Peter's. He
obtained the favor of alone having the key of the chapel, and of
not having any visitors.
The visits of the Pope, which he dared
not refuse, he rendered difficult by leaving no access to his scaf-
folding save by a steep step-ladder, upon which the old Pope had
to risk himself. This obscure and solitary vault, in which he
passed five years, was for him the cave of Mount Carmel; and
he lived in it like Elias. He had a bed suspended from the arch,
upon which he painted with his head stretched back. No com-
pany but the prophets and the sermons of Savonarola. It was
thus, in the absolute solitude of the years 1507, 1508, 1509, 1510,
- it was during the war of the League of Cambray, when the
Pope gave a last blow to Italy in killing Venice,- that the great
Italian made his prophets and his sibyls, realized that work of
sorrow, of sublime liberty, of obscure presentments, of inter-
penetrating lights.
He put four years into it. And I-I have put thirty years
I
into interrogating it. Not a year at longest has passed without
my taking up again this Bible, this Testament, which is never old
nor new, but of an age still unknown. Born out of the Jewish
Bible, it passes and goes far beyond it. One must take care
not to go into the chapel, as is done during the solemnities
of Holy Week and with the crowd. One must go there alone,
slip in as the Pope sometimes did (only Michel Angelo would
frighten him by throwing down a plank); one must confront it,
tête-à-tête, alone. Reassure yourself: that painting, extinguished
and obscured by the smoke of incense and of candles, has no
longer its old trait of inspiring terror; it has lost something of
its frightening power, gained in harmony and sweetness; it par.
takes of the long patience and equanimity of time.
It appears
blackened from the depths of ages; but all the more victorious,
not surpassed, not contradicted. Dante did not see these things
in his last circle. But Michel Angelo saw them, foresaw them,
dared to paint them in the Vatican, writing the three words of
Belshazzar's feast upon the walls, soiled by the Borgias, the mur-
derers of Robera. Happily he was not understood. They would
have had it all effaced. We know how for years he defended the
door of the Sixtine Chapel, and how Julius II. told him: "If
## p. 9993 (#405) ###########################################
JULES MICHELET
9993
you are slow, I will throw you down from the top of your scaf-
fold. ” On the perilous day when the door was at last opened,
and when the Pope entered in processional pomp, Michel Angelo
could see that his work remained a dead letter; that in looking
at it they saw nothing. Stunned by the enormous enigma, ma-
licious but not daring to malign those giants whose eyes shot
thunderbolts, they all kept silence. The Pope, to put a good
countenance upon it, and not let himself be subdued by the terri.
fying vision, grumbled out these words: “There is no gold in it
at all. ” Michel Angelo, reassured now and certain of not being
understood, replied to this futile censure, his bitter tragic mouth
laughing: “Holy Father, the people up there, they were not
rich, but holy personages, who did not wear gold, and made little
of the goods of this world. ”
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Grace King.
SUMMARY OF THE INTRODUCTION TO THE RENAISSANCE)
W*"
did the Renaissance arrive three hundred years too late ?
Why did the Middle Age live three hundred years after
its death? Its terrorism, its police, its stakes and fagots,
would not have sufficed. The human mind would have shattered
everything. Salvation came from the School, from the creation
of a great people of reasoners against Reason. The void became
fecund, created. Out of the proscribed philosophy was born the
infinite legion of wranglers: the serious, violent disputation of
emptiness, nothingness. Out of the smothered religion was born
the sanctimonious world of reasoning mystics; the art of raving
sagely. Out of the proscription of nature and the sciences was
brought forth a throng of impostors and dupes, who read the
stars and made gold. Immense army of the sons of Eolus, born
of wind and puffed out with words. They blew. At their breath,
a babel of lies and humbugs, a solid fog, thickened by magic in
which reason would not take hold, arose in the air. Humanity
sat at the foot, mournful, silent, renouncing truth. If at least,
in default of truth, one could attain justice? The king opposes
it against the pope. Great tumult, great combat by our gods!
And all for nothing. The two incarnations come to an agree-
ment, and all liberty is despaired of. People fall lower than
before. The communes have perished; the burgher class is born,
## p. 9994 (#406) ###########################################
9994
JULES MICHELET
C
and with it a petty prudence. The masses thus deadened, what
can great souls effect ? Superhuman apparitions to awaken the
dead will come, and will do nothing. The people see a Joan of
Arc pass by, and say, “Who is that girl ? » Dante has built his
”
cathedral, and Brunelleschi is making his calculations for Santa
Maria del Fiore. But Boccaccio alone is enjoyed. The goldsmith
dominates the architect. The old Gothic church, in extremis, is
overlaid with all kinds of little ornaments, crimpings, lace-work,
etc. She is tricking herself off, making herself pretty. The per-
severing cultivation of the false, continued so many centuries, the
sustained care to flatten the human brain, has produced its fruit.
To the proscribed natural has succeeded the anti-natural, out of
which by spontaneous generation is born the monster with two
faces: monster of false science, monster of perverse ignorance.
The scholastic and the shepherd, the inquisitor and the witch,
represent two opposing peoples. Withal the fools in ermine and
the fools in rags have fundamentally the same faith, — faith in
Evil as the master and prince of this world. Fools, terrified at
the triumph of the Devil, burn fools to protect God. Here lies
the deepest depth of the darkness. And a half-century passes
without printing's bringing even a little light into it. The great
Jewish Encyclopædia, published with its discordance of centu-
ries, schools, and doctrines, confuses at first and complicates the
perplexities of the human mind. The fall of Constantinople and
Greece's taking refuge in Europe do not help at all: the arriv.
ing manuscripts seek serious readers; the principal ones will not
be printed until the following century. Thus great discoveries —
machinery, material means, fortuitous aids, all — are still useless.
At the death of Louis XI. , and during the first years that fol-
lowed, there is naught that permits one to predict the dawn of a
new day. All the honor of it will belong to the soul, to heroic
will. A great movement is going to take place - of war and
events, confused agitations, vague inspirations. These obscure
intimations, coming out of the masses and little understood by
them, some one (Columbus, Copernicus, or Luther) will take for
himself; alone, will rise and answer, Here I am. ”
«
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Grace King.
## p. 9995 (#407) ###########################################
9995
ADAM MICKIEWICZ
(1798-1855)
BY CHARLES HARVEY GENUNG
SITH the passing of Poland from the family of European States,
the genius of her people received a fresh and passionate
impulse. Her political dominion was gone, but she set to
work in the world of spirit to create a new and undivided realm.
She put her adversity to sweet uses, and won a brilliant place in the
history of human culture. In the works of her poets the ancient
glories of the annihilated commonwealth re-
gained their lustre; and a host of splendid
names bear witness, in this century of her
political obliteration, to the fervid strength
of the old national spirit. Love of country,
pride in her great past, grief at her mis-
fortunes, and inextinguishable hope — these
are her poets' themes and the inspiration
of her noblest achievements.
The golden age of Polish letters was
ushered in by the Romanticists. In the
presence of the world-stirring events of a
great social revolution, the pseudo-classical
themes lost their vitality. German culture ADAM MICKIEWICZ
wrought a widening of the intellectual hori-
zon. Goethe, Schiller, Scott, and Byron became almost Polish poets.
In the background loomed Ossian and Shakespeare and Dante. Her-
mits, knights, and spectres took the place of the ancient gods in
the scenery of the new ballads. Mickiewicz began his literary career
with a collection of such ballads, and was hailed at once as a leader
of the Romantic movement; and this movement, although accom-
panied by much sound and fury, was yet the necessary prologue
to the splendid outburst of Polish poetry in the second quarter
of this century. It put an end to the domination of Paris, and set
free the national genius. Genuine poets arose, possessing the essen-
tials of high art, — a perfected technique, a deep and sympathetic
insight into the most diverse human motives, and a strong individu-
ality. Byron was the dominant literary influence. It is evident in
-
## p. 9996 (#408) ###########################################
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ADAM MICKIEWICZ
Malczewski's superb poem, “Maria,' whose appearance in 1825 marked
the beginning of the great age. Malczewski had known Byron in
Venice, and had suggested to him the theme of “Mazeppa'; but Mic-
kiewicz, Krasinski, Slowacki, all bear the marks of Byronic inspira-
tion. The literature of this golden age in Poland was one of exiles
and emigrants. Scarcely one of the great works of the time was
written on Polish soil, and yet never was a literature more intensely
national. The scenes are laid in Poland, the themes are drawn
from Polish history, and everything is treated with a passionate
patriotism. Even when, as in Krasinski's Irydion, the subject is
taken from the history of a foreign people, its application to the
situation of Poland is obvious. And it was Mickiewicz, wandering
for thirty years far from his native land, who finally gave to the
spirit of Poland its highest literary expression; he revived the pride
of the Poles in the spiritual achievements of their race, and restored
to them the consciousness of their national solidarity. He created
the great national poem of Poland in Pan Tadeusz” (Pan Thaddeus
of Warsaw), which ranks with the finest poetry of the world's liter-
ature. It is the crystallized product of all the centuries of Polish
culture; in it centre the pride, the hopes, and the ambitions of
the Polish people.
Adam Mickiewicz was born at Zaosie, near Novogródek, on Decem-
ber 24th, 1798. His childhood was passed in the midst of the most
stirring scenes, which left a deep impression upon him. During the
Russian campaign, his father's house was the headquarters of the
King of Westphalia. All the hopes of Poland were then founded
upon Napoleon; and for Napoleon, Mickiewicz cherished a lifelong
enthusiastic reverence, which in his latter days assumed a mystical
character. For Byron he felt a similar regard; but it was not Byron
but Bürger who gave the impulse to the volume of ballads with
which Mickiewicz made his first appearance in literature in 1822.
The ballad of 'Lenore) had a wonderful fructifying power: it gave
to Scott his earliest inspiration; it caught the youthful fancy of Vic-
tor Hugo; it awoke the genius of Mickiewicz. But the first distinctive
work of the Polish poet was written in the spirit of 'Werther, and
was wrung from him by his grief over an unfortunate love affair.
This was “Dziady' (In Honor of our Ancestors), a broadly conceived
but never finished poem, of which the first installment appeared in
1823. It is not the poet's own sorrow alone that here finds expres-
sion, for under this we hear the despairing cry of an enslaved people.
In 1824 Mickiewicz left his native land, never to return. He lived
in an age of unions and associations, of unrest and suspicion. Liter-
ary societies easily became involved in political discussions, and ac-
quired a reputation for revolutionary sentiments. Mickiewicz belonged
## p. 9997 (#409) ###########################################
ADAM MICKIEWICZ
9997
to the Philalethes; and on account of the part he took in a student
demonstration, he was arrested and sent to St. Petersburg. Banished
thence to Odessa, he obtained permission in the autumn of 1825 to
visit the Crimea. In the following year this visit bore fruit in the
splendid Oriental series of Crimean Sonnets. Meanwhile Mickiewicz,
whose personal relations with the Russian government had always
remained cordial, was given a post in the office of the Governor-
General at Moscow. He never had pretended to play the martyr; for
with his genuine Polish patriotism he combined a coldly objective
view of the political situation. When in 1828 he settled in St. Peters-
burg, he was received into the great world by the leading spirits of
the time with an enthusiasm that bordered on glorification. He stood
in close spiritual intercourse with Pushkin, the other great Slavic
poet of the age, and his junior by just six months. The fame of Mic-
kiewicz in Russia was based upon the translations of the Crimean
Sonnets) and of Konrad Wallenrod. ' This powerful epic, written
in Moscow in 1827 and published in St. Petersburg in 1828, treats of
the relations between Russia and Poland, and the burning questions
of the day are presented with cold objectivity. The manner is
Byronic. This poem at once took its place as a national epic, con-
tributed incalculably to the strengthening of the national feeling, and
furthermore it signalized the triumph of Romanticism.
Mickiewicz never definitely renounced Romanticism as Goethe
did. The classic and the romantic existed in him side by side. He
freed himself, however, from the shackles of a one-sided tendency, and
began to seek the sources of his poetry in reality and truth. And
for Mickiewicz truth came more and more to assume a religious color-
ing. Even where the influence of Faust' and 'Cain and Manfred'
is most apparent, the heroes of Mickiewicz are at strife only with
the sins and evils of humanity; they are never in revolt against the
Divine power.
But the work in which Mickiewicz first definitely
abandoned purely romantic methods was (Grazyna. It appeared at
about the same time that the publication of Konrad Wallenrod”
marked the culinination of the Romantic movement.
treat of the Lithuanian struggles against the encroachments of the
Teutonic Knights; but (Grazyna' is full of epic reserve, classic sim-
plicity, and majestic repose. It reveals Mickiewicz as an epic poet of
the grand style. By these two works he rose at once above the
strife of schools and tendencies into the regions of universal poetry,
and became the national poet of his people.
In the adulation with which Mickiewicz was surrounded in St.
Petersburg there lurked a certain danger: it threatened to drag his
genius down into the epicurean dolce far niente of the gay capital; but
the deep earnestness of his character saved him. In 1829 he obtained
Both poems
## p. 9998 (#410) ###########################################
9998
ADAM MICKIEWICZ
(
permission to leave Russia. As when, five years before, he had left
Poland forever, so when he crossed the Russian border he crossed it
never to return; he never again set foot on Slavic soil. The five
years in Russia had given to his genius its universality and cosmo-
politan range. And the travels which now began brought him a rich
harvest of experience and friends. In Weimar he met Goethe; in
Switzerland his two greatest Polish contemporaries, Krasinski and
Slowacki; and in the cosmopolitan society of Rome he formed a close
friendship with James Fenimore Cooper. In 1830 the revolution
which Mickiewicz had foreseen broke out in Warsaw, with the singing
of the closing stanzas of his own 'Ode to Youth. ' The poet hastened
to join his countrymen: but he was met at Posen with the news of
Polish defeat. He turned back, saddened and aimless. Sorrow of a
keenly personal sort followed close upon the grief of the patriot. In
Italy he fell in love with the daughter of a Polish magnate. His love
was reciprocated; but encountering the father's haughty opposition,
Mickiewicz suddenly departed. The literary result of this sorrow was
(Pan Tadeusz,' written, as Goethe wrote, for self-liberation. It was
begun in Paris in 1832 and published in 1834. It is the most per-
fect work of the poet, the culminating point of Polish poetry, - and
indeed, the pearl of all Slavic literature.
The scene of Pan Tadeusz' is laid in Lithuania in 1812, when
Poland's hopes were high, and Napoleon's star still in the ascendant.
It is the story of the last raid in Lithuania; and the lawlessness of
private war is here portrayed in vivid pictures. These civil feuds
were a late survival of the many disruptive evils upon which the com-
monwealth was finally wrecked. The poem abounds in rich poetic
scenes of Lithuanian life, the sublime sweep of the landscapes, the
solemn gloom and loneliness of vast primeval forests. There is in it
all a tone of majesty which reveals a great poet in his loftiest mood.
(Pan Tadeusz) was Mickiewicz's last important work. To be
mentioned, however, are (The Books of the Polish People and of the
Polish Pilgrimage, and the Lectures on Slavic Literature. ' In the
former the poet treats in Biblical style of the function of Poland in
history, and of her mission in the future. The Slavic lectures were
those delivered at the Collège de France, where in 1840 Cousin had
founded a chair of Slavic literature. Mickiewicz was the first incum-
bent, and his lectures were received with unbounded enthusiasm. All
literary Paris flocked to hear the famous poet tell of the spiritual
conquests of his countrymen. The lectures are distinguished by feli-
city of phrase and fineness of fancy; less by careful scholarship.
The last decade of the poet's life was clouded by sorrow, illness,
and financial embarrassment. In 1834 he had married the daughter
of the celebrated pianiste Szymanowska. It was not a marriage of
## p. 9999 (#411) ###########################################
ADAM MICKIEWICZ
9999
love, but seems not to have been unhappy. Mickiewicz's nature was
deeply religious; in Italy he had been in close communion with such
men as Montalembert and Lamennais; in Paris he became fascinated
by the mystic Messianism of the uncultured fanatic Towianski, and
with all the poetic fervor of his being he plunged into the depths of
mysticism. He was removed from his professorship on this account
in 1844. The genius of the poet was darkened; only the patriot
remained. In 1848 he tried to raise in Italy a Polish legion against
Austria. In 1849 he edited the Tribune des Peuples, but at the end
of three months the paper was suppressed. When Napoleon III.
seized the imperial throne in 1852, Mickiewicz was made librarian of
the Arsenal Library. During the war in the Orient, he was sent as
a special emissary of the French government to raise Polish legions
in Turkey. The camp life which his duties rendered necessary ruined
a constitution already undermined; and at Constantinople, on Novem-
ber 26th, 1855, he died. His body was brought to Montmorency, but
in 1890. was removed to the royal vaults at Cracow.
Mickiewicz, with his wide knowledge of literatures and languages,
and with his cosmopolitan experience, nevertheless succeeded by sheer
force of genius, infused with ardent patriotism, in so blending all the
foreign elements of his own culture with the characteristics of his
race and country as to create a distinctively Polish literature, and
deserve the name of supreme national poet. His poetry exercises in
Poland that cohesive force which Greece found in Homer and Italy
derived from Dante. He is the rallying-point for the poets and
patriots of Poland, and the consolation of a proud and oppressed race.
Chaus 4
Grunning
SONNET
T"
HE tricks of pleasing thou hast aye disdained;
Thy words are plain, and simple all thy ways;
Yet throngs, admiring, tremble 'neath thy gaze,
And in thy queenly presence stand enchained.
Amid the social babble unconstrained,
I heard men speak of women words of praise,
And with a smile each turned some honeyed phrase.
Thou cam'st, - and lo! a sacred silence reigned.
Thus when the dancers with each other vie,
## p. 10000 (#412) ##########################################
10000
ADAM MICKIEWICZ
And through the merry mazes whirling go,
Abruptly all is hushed: they wonder why,
And no one can the subtle reason show.
The poet speaks: “There glides an angel by! ”
The guest all dimly feel, but few do know.
Translation of Charles Harvey Genung.
[The following poems are from the Poets and Poetry of Poland. Edited, and
copyrighted 1881, by Paul Soboleski. ]
FATHER'S RETURN
A BALLAD
"G
0, CHILDREN, all of you together,
To the pillar upon the hill,
And there before the miraculous picture
Kneel and pray with a fervent will.
“Father returns not. Mornings and evenings
I await him in tears, and fret.
The streams are swollen, the wild beasts prowling.
And the woods with robbers beset. ”
The children heard, and they ran together
To the pillar upon the hill;
And there before the miraculous picture
Knelt and prayed with a fervent will.
“Hear us, O Lord!
nine years at the gates of Père la Chaise, and there was my only
promenade. Then I lived near La Bièvre, in the midst of great con-
vent gardens; more tombs. I lived a life that the world would have
called buried, with no society but the past, my only friends buried
people. The gift that St. Louis asked, and did not obtain, I had, -
the gift of tears. All those I wept over — peoples and gods — revived
I had no other art. »
All the criticism that has been written about Michelet is little
more than sermons from this text, furnished by himself. In it he
himself furnishes all the commentary needed upon his work; it is a
résumé of all his talent, and of his faults, — which are only the faults
of this talent, as Taine points out. Michelet's exalted sensibility he
calls imagination of the heart. ” To summarize Taine's conclusions:
for me.
« His impressionable imagination is touched by general as well as by par-
ticular facts, and he sympathizes with the life of centuries as with the life of
## p. 9984 (#396) ###########################################
9984
JULES MICHELET
men.
He sees the passions of an epoch as clearly as the passions of a man,
and paints the Middle Age or the Renaissance with as much vivacity as Phi-
lippe le Bel or François 1. . . . Every picture or print he sees, every
document he reads, touches and impresses his imagination; vividly moved and
eloquent himself, he cannot fail to move others. His book, the History,
seizes the mind fast at the first page; in vain you try to resist it, you read to
the end. You think of the dialogue where Plato describes the god drawing
to himself the soul of the poet, and the soul of the poet drawing to himself
the souls of his auditors.
Is it possible, where facts and men impress
themselves so vividly upon an inflamed imagination, to keep the tone of nar.
ration ? No, the author ends by believing them real; – he sees them alive, he
speaks to them. Michelet's emotions thus become his convictions; history
unrolls before him like a vision, and his language rises to Apocalyptic. ”
.
>
(
In his first design or vision of the History of France, Michelet
saw men and facts not chained to one another, and to past and
future, by chains of logical sequence, he saw them as episodes
rising in each period to a culminating and dramatic point of inter-
est; and however interrupted his work was, he pursued his original
design. Hence his volumes bear the titles of episodes: The Renais-
sance,' (The Reformation,' 'Religious Wars,' 'The League and Henry
IV. ,' (Henry IV. and Richelieu,' Richelieu and the Fronde,' Louis
XIV. ,' (The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes,' (Louis XV. ,' 'Louis
XV. and Louis XVI. ,' (The French Revolution. The Renaissance he
incarnated in Michel Angelo, the Revolution in Danton. He in fact
breathed a human soul into every epoch, period, and event that came
under his pen: and “a soul,” he says, weighs infinitely more than a
kingdom or an empire; at times, more than the human race. ” He
wrote as Delacroix painted,” Taine says: «risking the crudest color-
ing; seeking means of expression in the gutter mud itself; borrowing
from the language of medicine, and the slang of the vulgar, details
and terms which shock and frighten one. ” His prolific suggestions
swarm and multiply over the diseased tissue of a character, in the
tainted spot of a heart, until, as in the description of the moral
decadence of Louis XV. , the imaginative reader shudders and stops
reading; for suggestion has suggested what it is unbearable to think.
It is to the perfect happiness of his marriage to a second wife -
an incomparable companion — that we owe that series of books whose
dithyrambic strains were poured out under the silvery light of a
continuous honey-moon, as a biographer expresses it: L'Oiseau,'
L'Insecte,' L'Amour,' 'La Mer,' to which later a fifth, La Mon-
tagne,' was added; and which Taine says adds him to the three
great poets of France during the century,- De Musset, Lamartine,
and Hugo: «for art and genius, his prose is worth their poetry. ”
The Bible of Humanity, and some volumes of collected essays com-
plete the series of his published writings.
## p. 9985 (#397) ###########################################
JULES MICHELET
9985
In 1870 the Franco-Prussian war called out his France before
Europe,' a passionate appeal to the common fraternity of all peoples.
He was ardently engaged upon a history of the nineteenth century,
his last return to his History of France,' when he died in 1874 of
heart disease contracted during the Prussian invasion of his country.
He lies buried in Père la Chaise, where in youth he used to wander
among the dead he loved so well; who, responding to the passionate
evocation of his imagination, resumed their being before his mental
vision with such vivified reality, that in their turn they evoked from
his heart the genius that was henceforth to be his life.
Grace Tug
THE
THE DEATH OF JEANNE D'ARC
From the History of France)
He end of the sad journey was the Vieux-Marché, the fish-
market. Three scaffolds had been erected. Upon one were
the episcopal and royal chairs, and the throne of the car-
dinal of England amid the seats of his prelates. On the other
were to figure the personages of the dismal drama: the preacher,
the judges, the bailiff, and lastly the condemned one. Apart
was seen a large scaffold of masonry, loaded and overloaded with
wood. As to the pyre, there was nothing to complain of: it
frightened by its height. This was not merely to make the exe-
cution more solemn: there was an intention in it; it was that
the pile being built so high, the executioner could only reach
the bottom portion to light it, and thus he could not abridge the
martyrdom nor expedite the end, as he sometimes did to others,
sparing them the flame. Here there was no idea of defrauding
justice, or giving a dead body to the fire; they wished her to
be well burned, alive, and so that, placed on the summit of this
mountain of wood, and dominating the circle of lances and swords
around her, she could be seen from all parts of the place. Slowly
burned under the eyes of a curious crowd, there was
to believe that at the end she would be surprised into some
weakness, that something would escape her that might pass as
a disavowal; at the least, confused words to be interpreted, low
prayers, humiliating cries for mercy, as from a distracted woman.
XVII-625
reason
## p. 9986 (#398) ###########################################
9986
JULES MICHELET
The ghastly ceremony began by a sermon. Master Nicolay
Midy, one of the lights of the University of Paris, preached on
this edifying text: “When a member of the Church is ill, the
whole Church is ill. ” This poor Church could only cure itself
by cutting off a member. He concluded by the formula, "Jeanne,
go in peace: the Church cannot defend you. "
Then the judge of the Church, the bishop of Beauvais, be-
nignly exhorted her to think of her soul, and to recall all her
misdeeds in order to excite herself to contrition. The Assertors
had judged that it was according to law to read to her her abju-
ration: the bishop did not do anything of the kind, - he feared
her denials, her reclamations. But the poor girl did not dream
of thus quibbling for her life: she had far other thoughts.
Before they could even exhort her to contrition, she was on her
knees invoking God, the Virgin, St. Michael, and St. Catherine;
forgiving everybody, and asking forgiveness; saying to the assist-
ants, “Pray for me. " She requested each of the priests, particu-
larly, to say a mass for her soul. All this in such a devout
fashion, so humble, so touching, that emotion spreading, no one
could control himself: the bishop of Beauvais began to weep, he
of Boulogne sobbed; and behold the English themselves crying
and weeping also — Winchester with the others.
But the judges, who had for a moment lost countenance, recov-
ered and hardened themselves. The bishop of Beauvais, wiping his
eyes, began to read the condemnation. He reminded the culprit
of her crimes,- schism, idolatry, invocation of demons; how she
had been admitted to penitence; and how, seduced by the Prince
of Lies, she had fallen again - oh sorrow! - like the dog which
returns to his vomit. « Therefore we pronounce you a rotten
member, and as such, cut off from the Church. We deliver you
over to the secular power, praying it nevertheless to moderate
its judgment, by sparing you death and the mutilation of your
members. »
Thus forsaken by the Church, she committed herself in all
confidence to God. She asked for the cross. An Englishman
passed to her a cross, which he made of sticks: she received it
none the less devoutly; she kissed it, and placed it, this rough
cross, beneath her clothes and on her flesh. But she wished
to hold the Church's cross before her eyes till death; and the
good bailiff Massieu and brother Isambart were so moved by
her insistence that they brought her that of the parish church
of Saint-Sauveur. As she was embracing this cross and being
## p. 9987 (#399) ###########################################
JULES MICHELET
9987
couraged by Isambart, the English began to find all this very
long: it must be at least midday; the soldiers grumbled, the
cap-
tains said, “How, priest, will you make us dine here ? ” Then
losing patience, and not awaiting the order of the bailiff, who
nevertheless alone had authority to send her to death, they made
two soldiers climb up to remove her out of the priests' hands.
At the foot of the tribunal she was seized by armed men, who
dragged her to the executioner and said to him, “Do your
work. ” This fury of the soldiers caused horror; several of the
assistants, even the judges, fled in order not to see more. When
she found herself below in the open square amid these English-
men, who laid hands on her, nature suffered and the flesh was
troubled; she cried anew, "O Rouen! you will then be my last
dwelling-place. ” She said no more, and sinned not by her lips
even in this moment of terror and trouble; she accused neither
her king nor his saints. But, the top of the pile reached, seeing
that great city, that immovable and silent crowd, she could not
keep from saying, “O Rouen! Rouen! I have a great fear that
you will have to suffer for my death! ” She who had saved the
people and whom the people abandoned, expressed in dying only
admirable sweetness of soul, only compassion for them.
She was
tied beneath the infamous writing, crowned with a mitre, on
which was to be read, “Heretic, pervert, apostate, idolater ” — and
then the executioner lighted the fire. She saw it from above, and
uttered a cry. Then, as the brother who was exhorting her paid
no attention to the flames, she feared for him; forgetting herself,
she made him go down.
Which well proves that up to then she had retracted noth-
ing expressedly; and that the unfortunate Cauchon was obliged,
no doubt by the high Satanic will which presided, to come to
the foot of the pyre, to front the face of his victim, to try to
draw out some word. He only obtained one despairing one.
She said to him with sweetness what she had already said:
“Bishop, I die by your hand. If you had put me in the Church's
prisons this would not have happened. ” They had doubtless
hoped that believing herself abandoned by her king, she would
at the last accuse him, say something against him. She still
defended him. “Whether I did well or ill, my king had nothing
to do with it; it was not he who counseled me. ”
But the flame rose. At the moment it touched her, the un-
fortunate one shuddered, and asked for holy water; for water-
C
»
## p. 9988 (#400) ###########################################
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JULES MICHELET
it was apparently the cry of fright. But recovering herself
instantly, she no longer named any but God, his angels and his
saints. She testified, “Yes, my voices were from God; my voices
did not deceive me! This vanishing of all doubt, in the flames,
should make us believe that she accepted death as the deliv-
erance promised; that she no longer understood salvation in a
Judaistic and material sense, as she had done till then; that
she saw clear at last, and that coming out of the shadows, she
obtained that which she still lacked of light and holiness.
Ten thousand men wept. A secretary of the King of Eng-
land said aloud, on returning from the execution, "We are lost:
we have burned a saint! This word escaped from an enemy is
none the less grave. It will remain. The future will not con-
tradict it. Yes, according to Religion, according to Patriotism,
Jeanne d'Arc was a saint.
What legend more beautiful than this incontestable history!
But we should take care not to make a legend of it: every
feature, even the most human, should be piously preserved; the
touching and terrible reality of it should be respected. Let the
spirit of romance touch it if it dare: poetry never will do it.
And what could it add ? The idea which all during the Middle
Ages it had followed from legend to legend - this idea
found at last to be a person; this dream was tangible. The
helping Virgin of battles, upon whom the soldiers called, whom
they awaited from on high — she was here below.
-
In whom!
This is the marvel. In that which was despised, in that which
was of the humblest, - in a child, in a simple girl of the fields,
of the poor people of France. For there was a people, there
a France. This last figure of their Past was also the first
of the time that was beginning. In her appeared at the same
time the Virgin and already the country.
Such is the poetry of this great fact; such is the philosophy,
the high truth of it. But the historical reality is not the less
certain; it was only too positively and too cruelly established.
This living enigma, this mysterious creature whom all judged
to be supernatural, this angel or demon who according to some
would fly away some morning, was found to be a young woman,
a young girl: she had no wings, but, attached like us to a
mortal body, she was to suffer, die; and what a hideous death!
But it is just in this reality, which seems degrading, in this sad
trial of nature, that the ideal is found again and shines out. The
was
was
## p. 9989 (#401) ###########################################
JULES MICHELET
9989
contemporaries themselves recognized in it Christ among the
Pharisees. Yet we should see in it still another thing: the pas-
sion of the Virgin, the martyrdom of purity.
There have been many martyrs; history cites innumerable
ones, more or less pure, more or less glorious. Pride has had its
own, and hatred, and the spirit of dispute. No century has lacked
fighting martyrs, who no doubt died with good grace when they
could not kill. These fanatics have nothing to see here. The
holy maid is not of them; she had a different sign,-goodness,
charity, sweetness of soul. She had the gentleness of the ancient
martyrs, but with a difference. The early Christians only re-
mained sweet and pure by fleeing from action, by sparing them-
selves the struggle and trial of the world. This one remained
sweet in the bitterest struggle of good amid the bad; peaceful
even in war,— that triumph of the Devil, — she carried into it the
spirit of God. She took arms when she knew “the pity there
was in the kingdom of France. ” She could not see French blood
flow. This tenderness of heart she had for all men; she wept
after victories, and nursed the wounded English. Purity, sweet-
ness, heroic goodness — that these supreme beauties of soul should
be met in a girl of France may astonish strangers, who only like
to judge our nation by the lightness of its manners.
to them (and without self-partiality, since to-day all this is so far
from us) that beneath this lightness of manner, amid her follies
and her vices, old France was none the less the people of love
and of grace.
The savior of France was to be a woman. France was a
woman herself. She had the nobility of one; but also the ami-
able sweetness, the facile and charming pity, the excellence at
least of impulse. Even when she delighted in vain elegances
and exterior refinements, she still remained at the bottom nearer
to nature. The Frenchman, even when vicious, kept more than
any one else his good sense and good heart. May new France
not forget the word of old France: Only great hearts know
how much glory there is in being good. ” To be and remain
such, amid the injustices of men and the severities of Provi-
dence, is not only the gift of a fortunate nature, but it is strength
and heroism. To keep sweetness and benevolence amid so many
bitter disputes, to traverse experience without permitting it to
touch this interior treasure, - this is divine. Those who persist
and go thus to the end are the true elect. And even if they
Let us say
## p. 9990 (#402) ###########################################
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JULES MICHELET
have sometimes stumbled in the difficult pathways of the world,
amid their falls, their weakness, and their childishnesses they will
remain none the less children of God.
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Grace King.
MICHEL ANGELO
From The Renaissance)
W* the placid facility of
»
HERE was the soul of Italy in the sixteenth century? In
the placid facility of the charming Raphael? In the
sublime ataraxy of the great Leonardo da Vinci, the
centralizer of arts, the prophet of sciences ? He who wished
for insensibility, he who said to himself, “Fly from storms," he
nevertheless, whether he wished it or not, left in his St. John,'
in the ‘Bacchus,' and even in the Jocunda,' in the nervous
and sickly memory that all those strange heads express on their
lips — he has left a painful trace of the convulsing pains of the
Italian mind; of the kind of Maremma fever, which was cov-
ered by a false hilarity; of the jesting, rather light than gay, of
Pulci and Ariosto. There was a man in these times, a heart, a
true hero. Have you seen in the Last Judgment,' towards
the middle of the immense canvas, him who is disputing with
demons and angels,- have you seen in that face and in others
those swimming eyes struggling to look above; mortal anxiety
of a soul in which two opposing infinities are struggling ? True
image of the sixteenth century, between old and new beliefs;
image of Italy among nations; image of the man of the time,
and of Michel Angelo himself.
It has been marvelously well said, “Michel Angelo was the
conscience of Italy. From birth to death, his work was the
Judgment. ” One must not pay attention to the first pagan
sculptures of Michel Angelo, or to the Christian velleities that
crossed his life. In St. Peter he had no thought of the triumph
of Catholicism; his only dream was the triumph of the new art,
the completion of the great victory of his master Brunelleschi,
before whose work he had his tomb placed, in order, as he said,
to contemplate it throughout eternity. He proceeded from two
men, Savonarola and Brunelleschi. He belongs to the religion
of the Sibyls, of that of the prophet Elias, of the savage locust.
## p. 9991 (#403) ###########################################
JULES MICHELET
9991
eaters of the Old Testament. His one glory and his crown
nothing like it before, nothing afterwards — is his having put
into art that eminently novel thing, the thirst for and aspiration
towards the good. Ah, how well he deserves to be called the
defender of Italy! Not for having fortified the walls of Florence
in his last days; but for having, in the infinite number of days
that followed and will follow, showed in the Italian soul, mar-
tyred like a soul without right, the triumphant idea of a right
that the world did not yet see.
To recall his origin is to tell why he alone could do these
things. Born in the city of judges, Arezzo, to which all others
came to get podestàs, he had a judge for a father. He de-
scended from the counts of Canossa, relatives of the Emperor
who founded at Bologna, against the popes, the school of Roman
law. We must not be astonished that his family at his birth
gave him the name of the angel of justice, Michael, just as the
father of Raphael gave him the name of the angel of grace. It
was a choleric race. Arezzo, an old Etruscan city, petty fallen
republic, was despised by the great banking city; Dante gave
it a knock in passing. One of the most ordinary subjects of
Italian farces was the podestà, representing the powerlessness of
the law in stranger cities that called him, paid him, and drove
him out. Again everybody in Italy made mockery of his justice.
There was needed a heroic effort, like that of Brancaleone's, to
make the sword of justice respected. It needed a lion-hearted
man, stranger and isolated as he was, to execute his own judg-
ments disputed by all. Michel Angelo would have been one of
these warrior judges of the thirteenth century. By heart and
stature he belonged to the great Ghibellines of that time; to the
one whom Dante honored on his couch of fire; to the other with
the tragic face: "Lombard soul, why the slow moving of thine
eyes ? one would say a lion in his repose. ” Not wearing the
sword, under the reign of men of money, in its place he took the
chisel. He was the Brancaleone, the judge and podestà, of Ital-
ian art. He exercised in marble and stone the high censure of
his time. For nearly a century his life was a combat, a contin-
ual contradiction. Noble and poor, he was reared in the house of
the Medici, where we have seen him sculpturing statues of snow.
Republican, all his life he served princes and popes.
Envy dis-
figures him, a rival has deformed him forever. Made to love
and be loved, always he will remain alone.
## p. 9992 (#404) ###########################################
9992
JULES MICHELET
What was of great assistance to Michel Angelo was the fact
that the Sixtine Chapel, the work of Sixtus IV. , uncle of Julius
IV. , was only a second thought of the latter, who attached the
glory of his pontificate to the construction of St. Peter's. He
obtained the favor of alone having the key of the chapel, and of
not having any visitors.
The visits of the Pope, which he dared
not refuse, he rendered difficult by leaving no access to his scaf-
folding save by a steep step-ladder, upon which the old Pope had
to risk himself. This obscure and solitary vault, in which he
passed five years, was for him the cave of Mount Carmel; and
he lived in it like Elias. He had a bed suspended from the arch,
upon which he painted with his head stretched back. No com-
pany but the prophets and the sermons of Savonarola. It was
thus, in the absolute solitude of the years 1507, 1508, 1509, 1510,
- it was during the war of the League of Cambray, when the
Pope gave a last blow to Italy in killing Venice,- that the great
Italian made his prophets and his sibyls, realized that work of
sorrow, of sublime liberty, of obscure presentments, of inter-
penetrating lights.
He put four years into it. And I-I have put thirty years
I
into interrogating it. Not a year at longest has passed without
my taking up again this Bible, this Testament, which is never old
nor new, but of an age still unknown. Born out of the Jewish
Bible, it passes and goes far beyond it. One must take care
not to go into the chapel, as is done during the solemnities
of Holy Week and with the crowd. One must go there alone,
slip in as the Pope sometimes did (only Michel Angelo would
frighten him by throwing down a plank); one must confront it,
tête-à-tête, alone. Reassure yourself: that painting, extinguished
and obscured by the smoke of incense and of candles, has no
longer its old trait of inspiring terror; it has lost something of
its frightening power, gained in harmony and sweetness; it par.
takes of the long patience and equanimity of time.
It appears
blackened from the depths of ages; but all the more victorious,
not surpassed, not contradicted. Dante did not see these things
in his last circle. But Michel Angelo saw them, foresaw them,
dared to paint them in the Vatican, writing the three words of
Belshazzar's feast upon the walls, soiled by the Borgias, the mur-
derers of Robera. Happily he was not understood. They would
have had it all effaced. We know how for years he defended the
door of the Sixtine Chapel, and how Julius II. told him: "If
## p. 9993 (#405) ###########################################
JULES MICHELET
9993
you are slow, I will throw you down from the top of your scaf-
fold. ” On the perilous day when the door was at last opened,
and when the Pope entered in processional pomp, Michel Angelo
could see that his work remained a dead letter; that in looking
at it they saw nothing. Stunned by the enormous enigma, ma-
licious but not daring to malign those giants whose eyes shot
thunderbolts, they all kept silence. The Pope, to put a good
countenance upon it, and not let himself be subdued by the terri.
fying vision, grumbled out these words: “There is no gold in it
at all. ” Michel Angelo, reassured now and certain of not being
understood, replied to this futile censure, his bitter tragic mouth
laughing: “Holy Father, the people up there, they were not
rich, but holy personages, who did not wear gold, and made little
of the goods of this world. ”
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Grace King.
SUMMARY OF THE INTRODUCTION TO THE RENAISSANCE)
W*"
did the Renaissance arrive three hundred years too late ?
Why did the Middle Age live three hundred years after
its death? Its terrorism, its police, its stakes and fagots,
would not have sufficed. The human mind would have shattered
everything. Salvation came from the School, from the creation
of a great people of reasoners against Reason. The void became
fecund, created. Out of the proscribed philosophy was born the
infinite legion of wranglers: the serious, violent disputation of
emptiness, nothingness. Out of the smothered religion was born
the sanctimonious world of reasoning mystics; the art of raving
sagely. Out of the proscription of nature and the sciences was
brought forth a throng of impostors and dupes, who read the
stars and made gold. Immense army of the sons of Eolus, born
of wind and puffed out with words. They blew. At their breath,
a babel of lies and humbugs, a solid fog, thickened by magic in
which reason would not take hold, arose in the air. Humanity
sat at the foot, mournful, silent, renouncing truth. If at least,
in default of truth, one could attain justice? The king opposes
it against the pope. Great tumult, great combat by our gods!
And all for nothing. The two incarnations come to an agree-
ment, and all liberty is despaired of. People fall lower than
before. The communes have perished; the burgher class is born,
## p. 9994 (#406) ###########################################
9994
JULES MICHELET
C
and with it a petty prudence. The masses thus deadened, what
can great souls effect ? Superhuman apparitions to awaken the
dead will come, and will do nothing. The people see a Joan of
Arc pass by, and say, “Who is that girl ? » Dante has built his
”
cathedral, and Brunelleschi is making his calculations for Santa
Maria del Fiore. But Boccaccio alone is enjoyed. The goldsmith
dominates the architect. The old Gothic church, in extremis, is
overlaid with all kinds of little ornaments, crimpings, lace-work,
etc. She is tricking herself off, making herself pretty. The per-
severing cultivation of the false, continued so many centuries, the
sustained care to flatten the human brain, has produced its fruit.
To the proscribed natural has succeeded the anti-natural, out of
which by spontaneous generation is born the monster with two
faces: monster of false science, monster of perverse ignorance.
The scholastic and the shepherd, the inquisitor and the witch,
represent two opposing peoples. Withal the fools in ermine and
the fools in rags have fundamentally the same faith, — faith in
Evil as the master and prince of this world. Fools, terrified at
the triumph of the Devil, burn fools to protect God. Here lies
the deepest depth of the darkness. And a half-century passes
without printing's bringing even a little light into it. The great
Jewish Encyclopædia, published with its discordance of centu-
ries, schools, and doctrines, confuses at first and complicates the
perplexities of the human mind. The fall of Constantinople and
Greece's taking refuge in Europe do not help at all: the arriv.
ing manuscripts seek serious readers; the principal ones will not
be printed until the following century. Thus great discoveries —
machinery, material means, fortuitous aids, all — are still useless.
At the death of Louis XI. , and during the first years that fol-
lowed, there is naught that permits one to predict the dawn of a
new day. All the honor of it will belong to the soul, to heroic
will. A great movement is going to take place - of war and
events, confused agitations, vague inspirations. These obscure
intimations, coming out of the masses and little understood by
them, some one (Columbus, Copernicus, or Luther) will take for
himself; alone, will rise and answer, Here I am. ”
«
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Grace King.
## p. 9995 (#407) ###########################################
9995
ADAM MICKIEWICZ
(1798-1855)
BY CHARLES HARVEY GENUNG
SITH the passing of Poland from the family of European States,
the genius of her people received a fresh and passionate
impulse. Her political dominion was gone, but she set to
work in the world of spirit to create a new and undivided realm.
She put her adversity to sweet uses, and won a brilliant place in the
history of human culture. In the works of her poets the ancient
glories of the annihilated commonwealth re-
gained their lustre; and a host of splendid
names bear witness, in this century of her
political obliteration, to the fervid strength
of the old national spirit. Love of country,
pride in her great past, grief at her mis-
fortunes, and inextinguishable hope — these
are her poets' themes and the inspiration
of her noblest achievements.
The golden age of Polish letters was
ushered in by the Romanticists. In the
presence of the world-stirring events of a
great social revolution, the pseudo-classical
themes lost their vitality. German culture ADAM MICKIEWICZ
wrought a widening of the intellectual hori-
zon. Goethe, Schiller, Scott, and Byron became almost Polish poets.
In the background loomed Ossian and Shakespeare and Dante. Her-
mits, knights, and spectres took the place of the ancient gods in
the scenery of the new ballads. Mickiewicz began his literary career
with a collection of such ballads, and was hailed at once as a leader
of the Romantic movement; and this movement, although accom-
panied by much sound and fury, was yet the necessary prologue
to the splendid outburst of Polish poetry in the second quarter
of this century. It put an end to the domination of Paris, and set
free the national genius. Genuine poets arose, possessing the essen-
tials of high art, — a perfected technique, a deep and sympathetic
insight into the most diverse human motives, and a strong individu-
ality. Byron was the dominant literary influence. It is evident in
-
## p. 9996 (#408) ###########################################
9996
ADAM MICKIEWICZ
Malczewski's superb poem, “Maria,' whose appearance in 1825 marked
the beginning of the great age. Malczewski had known Byron in
Venice, and had suggested to him the theme of “Mazeppa'; but Mic-
kiewicz, Krasinski, Slowacki, all bear the marks of Byronic inspira-
tion. The literature of this golden age in Poland was one of exiles
and emigrants. Scarcely one of the great works of the time was
written on Polish soil, and yet never was a literature more intensely
national. The scenes are laid in Poland, the themes are drawn
from Polish history, and everything is treated with a passionate
patriotism. Even when, as in Krasinski's Irydion, the subject is
taken from the history of a foreign people, its application to the
situation of Poland is obvious. And it was Mickiewicz, wandering
for thirty years far from his native land, who finally gave to the
spirit of Poland its highest literary expression; he revived the pride
of the Poles in the spiritual achievements of their race, and restored
to them the consciousness of their national solidarity. He created
the great national poem of Poland in Pan Tadeusz” (Pan Thaddeus
of Warsaw), which ranks with the finest poetry of the world's liter-
ature. It is the crystallized product of all the centuries of Polish
culture; in it centre the pride, the hopes, and the ambitions of
the Polish people.
Adam Mickiewicz was born at Zaosie, near Novogródek, on Decem-
ber 24th, 1798. His childhood was passed in the midst of the most
stirring scenes, which left a deep impression upon him. During the
Russian campaign, his father's house was the headquarters of the
King of Westphalia. All the hopes of Poland were then founded
upon Napoleon; and for Napoleon, Mickiewicz cherished a lifelong
enthusiastic reverence, which in his latter days assumed a mystical
character. For Byron he felt a similar regard; but it was not Byron
but Bürger who gave the impulse to the volume of ballads with
which Mickiewicz made his first appearance in literature in 1822.
The ballad of 'Lenore) had a wonderful fructifying power: it gave
to Scott his earliest inspiration; it caught the youthful fancy of Vic-
tor Hugo; it awoke the genius of Mickiewicz. But the first distinctive
work of the Polish poet was written in the spirit of 'Werther, and
was wrung from him by his grief over an unfortunate love affair.
This was “Dziady' (In Honor of our Ancestors), a broadly conceived
but never finished poem, of which the first installment appeared in
1823. It is not the poet's own sorrow alone that here finds expres-
sion, for under this we hear the despairing cry of an enslaved people.
In 1824 Mickiewicz left his native land, never to return. He lived
in an age of unions and associations, of unrest and suspicion. Liter-
ary societies easily became involved in political discussions, and ac-
quired a reputation for revolutionary sentiments. Mickiewicz belonged
## p. 9997 (#409) ###########################################
ADAM MICKIEWICZ
9997
to the Philalethes; and on account of the part he took in a student
demonstration, he was arrested and sent to St. Petersburg. Banished
thence to Odessa, he obtained permission in the autumn of 1825 to
visit the Crimea. In the following year this visit bore fruit in the
splendid Oriental series of Crimean Sonnets. Meanwhile Mickiewicz,
whose personal relations with the Russian government had always
remained cordial, was given a post in the office of the Governor-
General at Moscow. He never had pretended to play the martyr; for
with his genuine Polish patriotism he combined a coldly objective
view of the political situation. When in 1828 he settled in St. Peters-
burg, he was received into the great world by the leading spirits of
the time with an enthusiasm that bordered on glorification. He stood
in close spiritual intercourse with Pushkin, the other great Slavic
poet of the age, and his junior by just six months. The fame of Mic-
kiewicz in Russia was based upon the translations of the Crimean
Sonnets) and of Konrad Wallenrod. ' This powerful epic, written
in Moscow in 1827 and published in St. Petersburg in 1828, treats of
the relations between Russia and Poland, and the burning questions
of the day are presented with cold objectivity. The manner is
Byronic. This poem at once took its place as a national epic, con-
tributed incalculably to the strengthening of the national feeling, and
furthermore it signalized the triumph of Romanticism.
Mickiewicz never definitely renounced Romanticism as Goethe
did. The classic and the romantic existed in him side by side. He
freed himself, however, from the shackles of a one-sided tendency, and
began to seek the sources of his poetry in reality and truth. And
for Mickiewicz truth came more and more to assume a religious color-
ing. Even where the influence of Faust' and 'Cain and Manfred'
is most apparent, the heroes of Mickiewicz are at strife only with
the sins and evils of humanity; they are never in revolt against the
Divine power.
But the work in which Mickiewicz first definitely
abandoned purely romantic methods was (Grazyna. It appeared at
about the same time that the publication of Konrad Wallenrod”
marked the culinination of the Romantic movement.
treat of the Lithuanian struggles against the encroachments of the
Teutonic Knights; but (Grazyna' is full of epic reserve, classic sim-
plicity, and majestic repose. It reveals Mickiewicz as an epic poet of
the grand style. By these two works he rose at once above the
strife of schools and tendencies into the regions of universal poetry,
and became the national poet of his people.
In the adulation with which Mickiewicz was surrounded in St.
Petersburg there lurked a certain danger: it threatened to drag his
genius down into the epicurean dolce far niente of the gay capital; but
the deep earnestness of his character saved him. In 1829 he obtained
Both poems
## p. 9998 (#410) ###########################################
9998
ADAM MICKIEWICZ
(
permission to leave Russia. As when, five years before, he had left
Poland forever, so when he crossed the Russian border he crossed it
never to return; he never again set foot on Slavic soil. The five
years in Russia had given to his genius its universality and cosmo-
politan range. And the travels which now began brought him a rich
harvest of experience and friends. In Weimar he met Goethe; in
Switzerland his two greatest Polish contemporaries, Krasinski and
Slowacki; and in the cosmopolitan society of Rome he formed a close
friendship with James Fenimore Cooper. In 1830 the revolution
which Mickiewicz had foreseen broke out in Warsaw, with the singing
of the closing stanzas of his own 'Ode to Youth. ' The poet hastened
to join his countrymen: but he was met at Posen with the news of
Polish defeat. He turned back, saddened and aimless. Sorrow of a
keenly personal sort followed close upon the grief of the patriot. In
Italy he fell in love with the daughter of a Polish magnate. His love
was reciprocated; but encountering the father's haughty opposition,
Mickiewicz suddenly departed. The literary result of this sorrow was
(Pan Tadeusz,' written, as Goethe wrote, for self-liberation. It was
begun in Paris in 1832 and published in 1834. It is the most per-
fect work of the poet, the culminating point of Polish poetry, - and
indeed, the pearl of all Slavic literature.
The scene of Pan Tadeusz' is laid in Lithuania in 1812, when
Poland's hopes were high, and Napoleon's star still in the ascendant.
It is the story of the last raid in Lithuania; and the lawlessness of
private war is here portrayed in vivid pictures. These civil feuds
were a late survival of the many disruptive evils upon which the com-
monwealth was finally wrecked. The poem abounds in rich poetic
scenes of Lithuanian life, the sublime sweep of the landscapes, the
solemn gloom and loneliness of vast primeval forests. There is in it
all a tone of majesty which reveals a great poet in his loftiest mood.
(Pan Tadeusz) was Mickiewicz's last important work. To be
mentioned, however, are (The Books of the Polish People and of the
Polish Pilgrimage, and the Lectures on Slavic Literature. ' In the
former the poet treats in Biblical style of the function of Poland in
history, and of her mission in the future. The Slavic lectures were
those delivered at the Collège de France, where in 1840 Cousin had
founded a chair of Slavic literature. Mickiewicz was the first incum-
bent, and his lectures were received with unbounded enthusiasm. All
literary Paris flocked to hear the famous poet tell of the spiritual
conquests of his countrymen. The lectures are distinguished by feli-
city of phrase and fineness of fancy; less by careful scholarship.
The last decade of the poet's life was clouded by sorrow, illness,
and financial embarrassment. In 1834 he had married the daughter
of the celebrated pianiste Szymanowska. It was not a marriage of
## p. 9999 (#411) ###########################################
ADAM MICKIEWICZ
9999
love, but seems not to have been unhappy. Mickiewicz's nature was
deeply religious; in Italy he had been in close communion with such
men as Montalembert and Lamennais; in Paris he became fascinated
by the mystic Messianism of the uncultured fanatic Towianski, and
with all the poetic fervor of his being he plunged into the depths of
mysticism. He was removed from his professorship on this account
in 1844. The genius of the poet was darkened; only the patriot
remained. In 1848 he tried to raise in Italy a Polish legion against
Austria. In 1849 he edited the Tribune des Peuples, but at the end
of three months the paper was suppressed. When Napoleon III.
seized the imperial throne in 1852, Mickiewicz was made librarian of
the Arsenal Library. During the war in the Orient, he was sent as
a special emissary of the French government to raise Polish legions
in Turkey. The camp life which his duties rendered necessary ruined
a constitution already undermined; and at Constantinople, on Novem-
ber 26th, 1855, he died. His body was brought to Montmorency, but
in 1890. was removed to the royal vaults at Cracow.
Mickiewicz, with his wide knowledge of literatures and languages,
and with his cosmopolitan experience, nevertheless succeeded by sheer
force of genius, infused with ardent patriotism, in so blending all the
foreign elements of his own culture with the characteristics of his
race and country as to create a distinctively Polish literature, and
deserve the name of supreme national poet. His poetry exercises in
Poland that cohesive force which Greece found in Homer and Italy
derived from Dante. He is the rallying-point for the poets and
patriots of Poland, and the consolation of a proud and oppressed race.
Chaus 4
Grunning
SONNET
T"
HE tricks of pleasing thou hast aye disdained;
Thy words are plain, and simple all thy ways;
Yet throngs, admiring, tremble 'neath thy gaze,
And in thy queenly presence stand enchained.
Amid the social babble unconstrained,
I heard men speak of women words of praise,
And with a smile each turned some honeyed phrase.
Thou cam'st, - and lo! a sacred silence reigned.
Thus when the dancers with each other vie,
## p. 10000 (#412) ##########################################
10000
ADAM MICKIEWICZ
And through the merry mazes whirling go,
Abruptly all is hushed: they wonder why,
And no one can the subtle reason show.
The poet speaks: “There glides an angel by! ”
The guest all dimly feel, but few do know.
Translation of Charles Harvey Genung.
[The following poems are from the Poets and Poetry of Poland. Edited, and
copyrighted 1881, by Paul Soboleski. ]
FATHER'S RETURN
A BALLAD
"G
0, CHILDREN, all of you together,
To the pillar upon the hill,
And there before the miraculous picture
Kneel and pray with a fervent will.
“Father returns not. Mornings and evenings
I await him in tears, and fret.
The streams are swollen, the wild beasts prowling.
And the woods with robbers beset. ”
The children heard, and they ran together
To the pillar upon the hill;
And there before the miraculous picture
Knelt and prayed with a fervent will.
“Hear us, O Lord!
